Wired News reports:
This week, Rep. Felix Grucci (R-New York) introduced legislation requiring schools and libraries receiving federal funds to block access from their computers to anonymous Web browsing or e-mail services.
Full Story: Wired News: Anonymity Takes a D.C. Hit
For those unfamiliar with him, this interview serves as a good introduction.
Markets, Antimarkets and Network Economics.
Markets and Antimarkets pt. 1.
Markets and Antimarkets pt. 2.
Markets and Antimarkets pt. 3.
Markets and Antimarkets pt. 4.
Markets and Anti-markets in the World Economy.
Josh Ellis’s latest rant about the Grim Meathook Future (this time he talks a bit about the alternatives):
It’s a simple fact that the American lifestyle is unsustainable for more than maybe another decade. That means that all of the companies that are in the business of outfitting that lifestyle are screwed. It’s hard to sell big, expensive HDTVs to a nomad who lives out of a souped-up Winnebago and drives around doing manual labor. (I’m talking about you, of course, my reader, when the oil and the money finally starts to run out.)
The big markets of the 21st century aren’t going to be in luxury consumer goods like iPods and HDTVs and home stereo systems that pump more watts than the Grateful Dead in 1971. It’s going to be Lifestraws and inexpensive antiviral medication and cheap, cheap computers and cheaper Internet access. […]
There are larger markets to consider now, perhaps with smaller individual revenue streams but greater volumes than you can possibly imagine. There’s a great bit in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon where some of the main characters, who are geeks, develop a system that allows Filipino pinoy workers to send video messages back home from the local branch of the global convenience store. The system is a hit, of course, and the characters use it to fund their long-term deranged money-making schemes.
It’s a good, check it out.
Of course, there are entrepreneurs and designers who are working on this sort of stuff… but like Josh said in his first rant, that sort of thing doesn’t get you on the cover of Wired. World Changing, of course, is the go to place for information about the real future tech.
Web 2.0 is great. I work for a Web 2.0 company (and so does Josh). But the most important challenges faces humanity will be energy, climate change, and water shortages. Hopefully, some of the tools of Web 2.0 will be useful for the people solving the real issues.
Also, check out this great interview with Wes Janz about archetecture and design in squats, slums, etc.
The New York Times has announced they will publish the Downing Street Memo. Wes wonders on his blog whether his Philip K. Nixon work had any influence on this decision. You can read about Wes’s Drowning Street Memo album here.
Along with Chris Arkenburg, Wes is emerging as a leader in the realm of using magic to assault authority. It was his early research on the subject that lead me to invite him to guest blog at Technoccult, and he ended up posting a long article on the subject here.
The Sudden Stardom of the Third-World City (via Abstract Dynamics).
TK writes:
This brings us to the most perverse suspicion of all. Perhaps the Third-World city is more than simply the source of the things that will define the future, but actually is the future of the western city. Perhaps some of those tourists who look to the Third World for an image of their own past are reflecting uneasily on how all the basic realities of the Third-World city are already becoming more pronounced in their own cities: vast gulfs between sectors of the population across which almost no sympathetic intelligence can flow, gleaming gated communities, parallel economies and legal systems, growing numbers of people who have almost no desire or ability to participate in official systems, innovations in residential housing involving corrugated iron and tarpaulin. Is it going too far to suggest that our sudden interest in books and films about the Third-World city stems from the sense that they may provide effective preparation for our future survival in London, New York or Paris?
I hadn’t really thought of it quite like this, but yes I think some of my own interest in 3rd world megalopolises is in gaining some insight about what the future may look like for all of us.
See also: Feral Cities, Grim Meathook Future, Biopunk: the biotechnology black market, and Adam Greenfield’s Design Engaged 2005 presentation (does anyone have better notes for this?).
I remain skeptical of whether we’re truly entering some sort of post-capitalist “attention economy.” But I’m a techie, not an economist, so I’ll leave that discussion to people better suited for it for the time being.
Regardless, attention is the new technological frontier. Reading through notes from ETech 2006, as well as other recent blogosphere activity re: glocalization, everyware, myware, etc. I was left with a feeling I’d heard rather a lot of it before. It’s pretty impressive how far ahead of their time Headmap were in when they published their manifesto in 1999. I’ve only read the Headmap Redux, available here. It had some early ideas about the stuff that’s shaping our current reality.
Here’s one particularly relevant bit:
As far as I can tell I’m a pattern following animal. There are whole years of my life that I cannot clearly remember. Sometimes in an effort to recover those years, and in the absence of a journal or diary to remind me, I grab a pile of bank statement from that year and study them to see roughly where I was and what I was doing. Usually mind numbing patterns emerge. Same Safeway, same day, every two weeks, roughly the same amount spent. Same ATM every friday night roughly the same amount. Every two weeks a meal at one of a small number of revisited restaurants. Every month rent cheque, haircut, some aberrant item like clothing or travel. If I continue long enough the pattern breaks up temporarily as I move to another city and then quickly settles down again. If I had my grocery receipts I’d find roughly the same food items recurring for months at a time. If I could trace my movements I’d find myself taking similar routes over and over again to get to the same set of destinations.
Show people their patterns in a way that might be directly useful and interesting to them, even suggest changes in behaviour and be able to measure and show direct changes in mood resulting.
Sounds a lot like what Attention Trust is up to.
They also warned us, in this blog post, of a potential dark side I’ve not yet seen discussed elsewhere:
on the darker side quantifying attention leads to being paid in attention units rather than hours, and more pay for longer periods of continuous attention ..and variable rates depending on where your attention is focused at any given moment
[call centres pretty much there already]
(Update: I remembered that this idea is also present in Snow Crash, the character who works for the federal government has her attention tracked constantly)
Tahoe Daily Tribune reports:
Nevada National Guard Sgt. Patrick Stewart gave his life for his country when the Chinook helicopter he was in was shot down in Afghanistan in September. […]
Stewart was a follower of the Wiccan religion, which is not recognized by the Department of Veterans Affairs for use in its cemeteries.
Stewart’s widow, Roberta, said she will wait until her family’s religion — and its five-pointed star enclosed in a circle, with one point facing skyward — is recognized for use on memorials before Stewart’s plaque is installed.
Tahoe Daily Tribune: Fernely Guardsman’s Wiccan faith unrecognized on memorial
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